In 1911 the Canadian National Railway joining Radville and Moose Jaw was built. The C.N. chose to locate the townsite on the quarter section of land they had purchased from a local homesteader. In 1912, the town- site was surveyed and subdivided into lots. An early settler, Wes Patterson, built the first store and post office. He named the town "Dummer" after his old home township in Ontario.
Dummer is fifty miles southwest of Regina. It is serviced by the C.N. Railway and a grid road that connects it to the neighboring towns of Parry and Truax,
Dummer was once a thriving town with a general store, hardware store, drug store, Chinese laundry, blacksmith, lumberyard, meat market, hotel and restaurant, garage and implement dealer (John Deere), barber shop and pool room, livery stable, drying business, Massey Harris dealer, international harvester, general motors dealer and a bank. The post office was originally in homesteads but it was eventually relocated to stores with the final resting place in the general store.
There were three elevators in Dummer. The first elevator was built in 1912 and was owned by the Reliance Grain Company but it burned down in 1925. They rebuilt and in 1945 it was purchased by the Saskatoon Wheat POOL. The second elevator was built in 1913 and owned by the Heywood company. The third elevator was built in 1914 by the Alberta Pacific Grain Company.
The residents of the town chose to go to nearby churches rather than build their own. The Catholics went to the church in Truax, Anglicans went to Dahinda, Lutherans went to Edgeworth and Bethesda, and Methodists to Parry. In 1955 the United congregation purchased the old Lakeview church from Lang and moved it into town the same year. It closed in 1971 and sat unused until it was moved to Minton in 1981.
The Dummer Recreation Center which is the only remaining building in the town as of 2023 was originally the school. It held elementary and high school students until 1958 when they were bussed to Parry. The Parry school was eventually closed and demolished in more recent years but you can view our exploration here.
Information sourced from the Dummer heritage book: Their history, our heritage : Dummer
The photographs below are from trips in 2008, 2014, and 2020. They are not in any particular order so you may see the same location multiple times but in various states of decay. We have been told that nothing remains except the community hall/former school building.
